Given all the possible scenarios which might explain the booms and/or explosions, there does seem to be one common denominator: The base really dropped the ball on this one. They had an absolute responsibility to warn people living near the base about the noises and they failed miserably. This is what you call a public relations fuck up to the tenth degree. Someone suggested that the base commander went AWOL. Well, there's no doubt that someone at the base is more than a little out to lunch!

MojaveMike: Someone definitely screwed the pooch on this one. Not sure if there will be an apology issued or if the idiot responsible for the incident will be held accountable, but its scary to think that such incompetent numbskulls are running things on the base!

So far I haven't heard an official explanation for the sonic booms back a few weeks ago. Not sure who the boneheads are at the base who can't be bothered to provide warning to the public, but more than a few people (mostly children and the elderly) were more than a little scared. You'd think that the dipsticks at the base might be just a little more considerate! Must make them feel like big men to scare little children and old people!

No official explanation likely. There seems to be some misinformation and so the truth is difficult to determine. Best explanation I heard was that it was an experiment that went wrong. None of the explosions or sonic booms were supposed to happen. What I heard was that two or three of the booms were explosions and the others were sonic booms. Lose lips sink ships and so don't expect a coherent explanation, but bits and pieces are likely to get discussed and you might even overhear something interesting while shopping in Ridgecrest!

There's a lot of gossip and a lot of people with all sorts of theories about what goes on at China Lake. How much is based on intentionally misleading information and how much is somewhat accurate is difficult to determine. But people talk whether they know what they're talking about or not!

Not all, not a majority I don't think, but there are some wackos that get involved in these type of debates. Not all, but some of those types still think we never landed on the moon and think the earth is flat. So maybe, with no hard eveidence maybe there is nothing really fishy going on on the base. That could be, not positve, but maybe that could be an possibility. The sonic booms may have just been a screw up.

SCREW UPS: Screw ups come in many varieties. There are normal screw ups which we might also be call slight errors. There are major screw ups. There's what they call screwing the pooch. Sometimes people are called screw ups. The term covers a lot of ground and one way or another some kind of screw up occurred, but the degree of screw uppedness is difficult to determine! And that's what gets people talking...

KissMyTail: Lose lips sink ships... Good thing there's no ships in the desert, right? China Lake may be a navy base, but without water there ain't no ships to be sunk and so we're safe! At least in theory...